I haven't had a lot of experience with Lux clocks but these starbursts had piqued my interest and I finally decided to restore one. This one had hanged for many years in a less than ideal environment. It was very dirty, full of dust bunnies, and the metal finishes were degraded. There was rust on the gold tone frame and the dial was irremediably dingy.

I completely dissasembled the clock. The walnut spokes (which were in excellent condition) slide off with a little twisting. The hand assembly has an outer knurled nut and a larger nut holding on the metal dial face. Removing these exposed the motor in the one-piece gold tone plastic dial surround, chapter ring and motor housing. The hardest part of dissasembly was removing the plastic case from the metal frame without damage.

I scrubbed the rust from the frame with fine steel wool, which left a very mottled but still shiny gold tone finish which I decided to leave as it was. I just gave the walnut pieces a little wood oil. The gold of the plastic dial surround was aged but it had a sort of antiqued look so I also left it as it was, after cleaning.

The dial needed paint. It had a spun brassy center piece which showed a two-tone dial when removed. I'm somewhat of a vintage purist and usually restore to the original as much as possible, but I had seen one of these painted red, really liked the look, and decided to try it. It took some time and effort but the end result is, I think, worth it.

The movement was an experience unto itself. It was very noisy, and initial dissasembly didn't show me much that could be done with it. I had not seen one of these before, and it looked like I could remove the inner plate from the rotor assembly, which I did. It seems they sealed it this way because the fast, delicate fiberboard or bakelite gears are inside, somewhat protected. The gears showed a slight wear pattern from operating out of round - hence the noise - but were in good condition after cleaning.

The trick with this movement is to get good compression, of the inner rotor plate, and the black plastic housing with the time arbor gears that fits over it, in order to keep the pivots of the fast rotor gear from slipping out of the rotor plate. Once I got it firmly compressed and reassembled it operated very quietly.